By Charlie Meyer:
I recall not THAT many years ago, when commentators were older journalists, with decades of experience behind them. This came well before iReporters, and Twitter, and even CNN Headline News. Of course, it preceded that F-word (Fox) News Network. In a country that brought the world fast food, instant breakfast, and the New York minute, have we squeezed out important tenets of responsible journalism in our rush for reportage in real time? Are we accepting raw data on its' own as the new “news”? Has opinion in print and in the ether descended to the level of an urban 'tagger' armed with a spray paint can? I hope not.
I admire, and have long enjoyed, Andy Rooney, who gives us 'a few minutes' towards the end of each CBS “60 Minutes” segment. He was born ninety years ago in Albany, New York, not far from where this columnist would enter the world thirty-something years later and twenty-something miles up the New York Thruway in the next city, Schenectady. It was a snowy day in March, and the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains, as usual, didn't get the memo heralding fhe first day of Spring. Schenectady was called “The Electric City”, after its' largest private employer, General Electric, back when GE actually made many products in this country. I remember a watering hole up Erie Boulevard from the landmark GE lighted sign, a dyslectic parody saloon called the “Electric Grinch,” but I digress. Andy, as many of the traditional breed of commentators, did his decades in the journalism trenches of print, radio, and television. I guess you don't need to have journalistic ! rigor to be a Fox firebrand, especially that obnoxious, young, long haired, twerp on Fox Business “Happy Hour,” a singuilarly compelling argument for Roe vs. Wade, or skill tests for a Reproduction License.
Recently, Glenn Beck broadcast to his faithful a wee near half-trillion dollar misstatement in the
Americorps budget, scaremongering a vision of Obama's taxpayer-funded storm troopers afield to advance the “liberal agenda.” Either Beck made a honest goof reading his script, or, more likely, he was just reverting to his “shock jock” of his “radio Zoo genre” DNA, oblivious to fact. I imagine there was little joy in his writers room, as a offending conservative acolyte writer was probably purged by “Vyshinsky“ Beck, then drawn. and quartered methinks by “Torquemada” Beck. “Pour encourager les autres” (“To encourage the others”).
Walter Cronkite died the other week. Despite some of the Right crediting Cronkite with handing the Viet Cong and North Vietnam the keys to Saigon, he was a journalist first and foremost. Cronkite paid his dues. When he would periodically appear from retirement as a commentator, he held the respect he had built broadcast by broadcast as a career journalist. When Cronkite said “And that's the way it is,” you could practically take it to the bank.
Walter Cronkite was a journalist. Beck and Limbaugh remind me of hucksters offering pre-FDA snake oil, or at best, ringmasters for some cheap one ring circus, with the common denominator being
drug rehab. Your mileage may vary, protected by the First Amendment. Myself, I do miss the 'old school' commentators, particularly when I watch the F-word News Channel, accompanied by Rolaids or Tums for snack food.
Freedom of the press is a fundamental measure of a free society. When Dave Boden invited me to write columns in this Faceoff series, I admitted that my last role in journalism was a brief stint as a college newspaper editor thirty-five years ago, but I did learn from the Dean of Students sending his minions to snatch up copies of an edition he didn't like. Journalism is the artform that reports observations and checks facts, with as little bias as humanly possible, enabling the readers to form
their own views and conclusions. When a journalist becomes a commentator, at least I have comfort in their professional training in checking facts. If you only want to read what you agree with, find a public relations firm or a cheerleader. That, I feel, is what separates a free press from a Ministry of Propaganda. A free press is the barometer of the health of First Amendment. Personally, I get uneasy when too many agree with me too often. I am not infallible, a fact I gained from a few years in the bonds of matrimony. If I cause folks to think, whether they agree or not, I'm doing my job.
By Stephen Smoot:
I’ve been looking at some political writing lately to prepare for this column about declining civility among political commentators. I really found some gems. One paper mentions “the ruthless policy of the Republican Party press (that) manages to disturb the law loving and peace cherishing Democrats of this state.” It goes on to call one Republican media outlet “a cesspool of political iniquity” and claims that “wherever Republican methods go they are corrupt and demoralizing.” A Republican outlet proclaimed that Democrats “Despise the Poor Man” in a headline. The same commentator said of a Democratic editor that he produced “ponderous and profound editorials which he graciously condescends, with god-like favor, to lay before the benighted people . . . through the medium of this (Democratic paper.)” Another commentator went further, saying that the President must resign “before it is too late to retrieve our deranged a! ffairs.” It then accused the President of excessive vanity.
The preceding quotations seem to confirm what so many have said in the past few years, that political commentary has grown ugly and more divisive. How different journalism seems now compared to the days when people got their knowledge on world events from the morning or afternoon paper and thirty minutes of network news. In thirty years we went from the grandfatherly tones of Walter Cronkite to the raucous back and forth between Keith Olbermann on one hand and Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly on the other.
Ask yourself though, what is more honest? Walter Cronkite played a powerful role in his network’s news coverage, as did his successor Dan Rather. They came from the days when journalism schools preached objectivity as the first rule of the profession. However, both these men committed a cardinal sin of the old school of (allegedly) objective journalism by themselves becoming the news. History remembers Walter Cronkite’s public statement against the Vietnam War as a major turning point in public opinion (Matt Lauer laughably tried to do the same in Iraq with rather pathetic results.) Dan Rather pursued a story on President George W. Bush’s National Guard service that had, as they say in the field “no legs.” In both cases old school objectivity flew out the window. Rather’s action
really marked the death of the illusion of “objective” journalism. It showed that such a thing probably never existed.
Enter the era of the twenty four hour news net works, each with their own market niche. CNN used to play to the center-liberals. Now that few real liberals exist anymore, they have shifted oh so subtly towards the center-right. MSNBC aims itself at the left wing, while Fox News goes anywhere from just right of center all the way out to libertarianism depending upon who is on at the time. The emergence of unabashedly partisan journalism combined with the death of supposed objectivity has made smarter
news consumers out of everyone. I know my comrade in pens prefers liberal news, but will sometimes have Fox News on in his establishment. He does this allegedly for his conservative customers, but I also think he tries to get the jump on our issues by getting the right side’s talking points down. That is smart consumption of journalism. He’s a better man than I am!
Yes the rhetoric is divisive and over the top. How can we restore a sense of national unity in such an atmosphere? First off, we don’t. Disagreement remains the best indicator of a healthy democracy. Obama wanted a list of dissenters turned in via e mail by his supporters while Nancy Pelosi called them Nazis. Conversely, President Bush did not prevent an obvious pack of lies, the movie *Fahrenheit 911 *from being shown in Iraq to troops just in from the battlefield. One president had a commitment to diverse opinions, even ones that flatly insulted him personally. Sure many
Republicans aggressively attacked anti-Bush folks in those years, but the president himself at times publicly praised a country where an individual could criticize and even insult their president. This administration instead tries to quell political dissent and desperately push towards an illusion of unity. Professor Bartlomiej Kaminski, from the University of Maryland’s Department of Government and Politics, identifies political pluralism as characteristic of democracy while a search for permanent social unity is an aspect of a state socialism (one could say the same of fascism.) The fact that commentators aggressively attack each other and elected officials indicates that democracy runs well. Most other countries with such heated debates over important issues solve them with guns and bombs, not words and votes.
Uncivil dialogue did not start in the past ten years. Most of American history sees zealous rhetoric in its press. The quotations I used to introduce this column did not come from today. The first set came
from the "Barbour Jeffersonian" circa mid 1880s, the next from the "Preston County Journal" of about ten years earlier. The final gem, a "Philadelphia Aurora" attack on President John Adams, was published in the most zealously partisan era of American journalism, the 1790s. Mean, nasty, hateful, and occasionally inaccurate commentary do not mean that we abandoned some long held tradition. Using passionate words instead of weapons is as American as apple pie.
